Gainesville mother-daughter duo changes lives one plate at a time

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (WCJB) -A Gainesville woman and her daughter are feeding hearts and hunger with their very own kitchen.

Ashlee Graves co-founded Have a Heart Kitchen with her daughter, Ambriel.

“She is actually the person that that character on the banner is based off of,” Graves shared. “That is a sketch of her that my sister did before she was diagnosed with cancer.”

Graves tells TV20 she used to make her children pass out food as punishment, but her daughter, Ambriel, fell in love and started cooking on a mass scale.

“We don’t have nobody to eat all of this stuff, so she got the idea to give it away...and her first choice was homeless people”

Have a Heart Kitchen offers free meals to anyone who needs them. The kitchen operates as many times a week as possible at 1504 East University in Gainesville, weather permitting, and you can keep up with their daily hours on their Facebook page.

“First of all, because it doesn’t cost nothing to be an decent person, no matter what you’re going through, there is always a person on this planet that’s doing worse than you, whether you know it or not.”

Graves takes donations of all kinds to keep the kitchen running, from condiments to takeout containers - deep fryers, ice, money, and more.

Changing lives one plate and one heart at a time.

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